In an untouched isle

I am awake in the nights
holding newborn babies, watching the
duskdawn beings out the windows
of these tall Seattle apartments—

Racoons tying knots, yards of
silk sound in the trees;
the brown, skittering rabbit
like a skipping stone along the slick
street
as my eyes

adjust to the sharp
of the moonlight.

I am prone to bewilderment

A whipping horizon
held in place
only by the different currents of
the salt water (earth) and the fresh water (sky).

I used to disappear
Thought myself immortal in the
very mortal space of New York.
Young and asian and femme,
long, winging hair.

I am cracked open
as illness does

I try to keep myself together

Try to imagine myself as a mandarin

Unpeeled, whole, and round.

I decided one day that I had to live.

No matter what.

And that to live meant that I must be gentle
through the violence around us

despite the pull towards the horizon that I am

often called to. That the blue, that the blue cannot
have me today. Every day I must decide
that the blue cannot have me, though I revere it.
Its song. The wide saucer of the sky.

I pull the prayer beads off my neck and watch
as they grow into wild animals
grazing at the foot of my mouth, pulling the grasses
and leaving the skin parched,
red.

I am a skilled shepherd.
A zookeeper in another lifetime.

And now I must tend to the wild
unnameables inside me
so that they do not reach out and break
through my mouth.

I leave my shifts each morning
touching the gentle heads of the babies, slipping them
into bassinets by their parents sleeping heads,

Thanking them each for trusting me.

Trust,

a marker I do not take lightly
that comes with the weight of these lives.

I come with a barrage of animals
shapeshifting. I watch them watching me as I
hush hush the babies in my arms.

Like a mobile hanging above the crib
the wings circle and circle.

I collect the feathers and place them in my night book
before I leave.

By the afternoon, they have turned into songs
that I place in my hands
and offer back to the sea.

it is a small, necessary task. it means being present in a way that lets my spirit be in charge. it requires putting my hands over my eyes and saying “be open to being changed.” and to live my life with the quiet certainty that if i am here with enough presence that i will be shifted. even if i don’t want to be.

in the past year, i have been watching for the orcas. in the spaciousness of time that my work allows of me, i am often able to—at a moment’s notice—drop what i’m doing and run out of my house. i turn the stove off, put a lid on whatever’s cooking, and get out the door. often without a raincoat or enough layers, i stand by the water to be there with the others who’ve also come out, as we wait, and wait, and wait, for that “small slice of ceremony,” as my teacher and friend karyn sanders calls it.

southern resident orcas are endangered. their main food source—the chinook salmon—have declined. the water polluation, the noise from the boats and large vessels, and all of this changing, terrifying world, have made their numbers smaller. yet here they are, on their journeying back and forth through the puget sound. to see them reminds me of how beautifully, incredibly small i am. and the reminder that life remains, continues, and that the death cult of empire is nothing against the truness of life.

there is a orca here named tahlequah, who has lost two of her children. she has carried her dead young on her back for weeks through the salish sea, her pod taking care of her in her grief, before letting go of her children, and allowing them to rest along the sea floor. i cry just thinking about her, here before the sun rises and my young dog runs into my room from upstairs where he sleeps with his other parent. the tiny tip-tip-tip of his paws as he runs faster when i call him.

these days are days of awe, which means also they are days of grief. i watch the morning star of venus rise. i am a libra rising, and that is my body planet. i thank her for watching over me, over all of us. i am a morning person now, which is a surprise, and a break in my pattern of staying up late. maybe because my partner wakes up so early for work and i want to make sure we kiss and soft hello, at least briefly, before he leaves. maybe because i like the softness of his voice when he talks to me in the dark. another thing that has changed me—that love. it’s funny to be dating a man again after ten years of not. i listen to the practice of songbirds singing. sleepily bring my pillow to the window and doze in and out, watching my breath fog the glass. there is never enough time. this life is so short. i crave it on this earth as if it were my first and last time.

i’ve signed up for text notifications to tell me when the orcas are close by, and when there have been sightings. but i have never caught them by following those. it is always when i am already at the water, sitting there doing whatever i am doing, that i see them. i look up, or am told to look up, to not just there picking up rocks on the shore, and there they are! i am always so knocked onto my ass about it.

karyn called it a small slice of ceremony, and it does feel that way—all of us standing at the cathedral of saltwater holding our hands to the sky and looking at each other, laughing.

orcas have shown up to me in dreams as shape-shifting people and as mediators of life and death. they ask me to be clear with myself around the choices i would make when there are no choices. if i choose life. if i choose death. who i protect when i must protect someone. i set water for them on my altar after each dream. i set water for tahlequah and her lost children this morning as i write this.

i think it is a similar feeling that i have when i watch someone give birth. when i witness a parent fully submerged in the process of death, life, birth, rebirth. it is the knowledge tht i can only bear witness and offer a tether to this ground, give them sips of water, hold their hips steady, as they do the crucial work of climbing into the horizon to gather life, and bring it down.

i weep at the preciousness of children. the loss of children. all the children of this earth. i weep for reem—her grandfather holding her dead body and smiling at her in gaza, saying “she is the soul of my soul.” when i leave a successful birth, when the parent and the baby both return here safely—i still cry as i drive home. tired, hungry, covered in all sorts of fluids. needing to be held, fed soup, tucked into bed.

i am in awe of this life because i must be. i am in awe of my body, in all of its constant pain and then the sometimes not-pain, because it can be taken away from us so quickly. as i left the grocery store the other day, i saw a motorcycle driver going 80mph down the road and saying “oh god. too fast.” and then, as i was driving away, seeing them on the ground lifeless, people surrounding their body. i heard in the news the next day that he had passed away. i must be in awe of this life becasue to not do so means that i am not paying attention to how crucial and intentional this all is. every single seed. every single unfurling life. every single morning. even this cat who i love who is scratching at my nightstand for me to get out of bed and feed her breakfast, who can hear my car from around the corner and greets me outside when i return home. even the annoying pile of laundry that i keep kicking around my floor. even the small bickering that i get into with my closest people. even knowing that i am running late to my oil change appointment to write this.

the sky is a deep blue still. i am thinking of you all this morning. i will write again soon.

I don’t want to sleep. I have to sleep. The birdsongs keep me in my wonder, and I want to read stories. I admitted to myself last night as I drove to my shift that I was scared. Scared of the future, of all the things that are so uncertain, of this beautiful world being severed in half by empire. Scared of what might happen to me & my loved ones. And the knowledge that I cannot be motivated by fear, and that I must continue to center in my love. This glimmering precious love that tethers me into this earth like a gold thread. I am alive. My people are alive. I will love fiercely, till I am no longer here. It is all we can do, I think.

I don’t usually dream during my shifts, but I did tonight. I dreamt of lost friendships from years back, the vivid startle of seeing each other unexpectedly, and the excavation of time between us. I wake up so, so sad, to a baby stretching out of their swaddle, whimpering. Hungry, and urgent in their hunger. Ok, up I go. We must still tend to life, despite the heavy wings of grief on the backs of our necks. Up, up we go, heavy heart, pouring milk into a bottle and heating it up. This sweet baby who sleeps so soundly when I put her down in the bassinet who says now. Be with me now.

She eats, but is still wide awake.

Babies are storytellers. She wants to tell me something very important, so I listen. We coo back and forth in our original language as I massage her ears and hold her head gently, like a ripe fruit, in my palms. She tells me about the big dipper, and the lamp in the corner, and how far she had to come to get here. I listen and thank her for her stories, and we smile at each other till she falls asleep, her hand curled around the end of my braid and her mouth pursed as if holding a jewel behind her lips.

Sometimes they are hungry. Sometimes they have to poop. Sometimes, they need to tell you something important, and are asking you to listen.

This baby is named after a flower that blooms only during the night in Vietnam. This is my last night with her, and I feel this ending like an open-ended story.

I enter into the doorway between worlds humbly, take my shoes off, and witness a new planet break from the underworld and arrange itself into place in a family’s orbit. I wash the birth parent’s feet with hot ginger rose water. I massage bellies, bring over teas that I’ve boiled for hours. I pour bath water over their backs, and sing to them like I sing to the little ones. And at night, I listen to stories. All the stories that matter. All the losses that made way for the possibility of this new life.

I love this work. This work of listening through the night, of being with the wonder & the grief of parenthood. Of being with the wonder & grief of being on this earth for just five days, and the beautiful tragedy of leaving one earth and entering another. Every time it is different, and every time I am honored when I hold a weeping someone in my arms. Change is the preceptor of grief. Grief is the knowledge that no matter how hard we try we cannot bring back what we have lost.

I wonder about the hands that held me when I was a newborn.

Who carried the stories that I brought over here from another world. Mitsuyo onni’s hands are the ones I remember most—the dark birthmark on the back of her hand.

The moon is setting; the sun is rising. My coffee that I got from the shop around the corner tastes weirdly like miso soup. I drink it anyways. My work echoes through me. I have become quieter, more attuned, more sleepy and dream-oriented in other parts of my life. I used to be so little once, too. I think of that while I lull off to sleep myself. I used to be so little, and so loved, in someone’s humming arms.

Goodnight <3.

I am not like you
The water does not change
when I walk through it, but
I put some river in this glass and see
our past swirling inside
The years of the rose buds
The years of the shy hands brushing the shy hair
Behind the (shy) ear

I think I am on the other side of you
but don’t turn around
I think I am on the other side
Picking a shell from the ground
And putting it to my ear
And hearing the end of the story you were telling me
Finally
When we were two apples together
Why am I surprised
(I was surprised before too)
How we fell each time
How each time we fell though we didn’t know what ground
What hand
would be there to catch us

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